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posted by martyb on Saturday January 12 2019, @05:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the won't-be-fooled-again,-or-will-they? dept.

Portland State University has initiated disciplinary proceedings against their philosophy professor Peter Boghossian for conspiring with colleagues to submit more than two dozen satirical papers to feminist theory and race-studies journals in an effort to prove those disciplines are academically fraudulent. The hoax papers, some of which were accepted by journals and which were revealed back in October, made Boghossian and his cohorts the international toast of "free thinkers" concerned that college campuses have become paralyzed by political orthodoxy.

After their ruse was revealed, the three authors described their project in an October article in the webzine Areo, which Pluckrose edits. Their goal, they wrote, was to "to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research." They contend that scholarship that tends to social grievances now dominates some fields, where students and others are bullied into adhering to scholars' worldviews, while lax publishing standards allow the publication of clearly ludicrous articles if the topic is politically fashionable.

Sources:
The Chronicle of Higher Education : Proceedings Start Against 'Sokal Squared' Hoax Professor (archive)
Willamette Week : Professor Who Authored Hoax Papers Says Portland State University Has Launched Disciplinary Proceedings Against Him (archive)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @07:00AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @07:00AM (#785423)

    The unspoken reason: It's a profit center. The college's donors are paying for it.

    Which donors? Money launderers for foreign psychological warfare departments.

    Reminder: there was near zero [catbox.moe] discussion of "privilege" and "microaggressions" and all that stuff in 2011, even on far left college campuses. Someone paid for it.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:13PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:13PM (#785509) Journal

    The unspoken reason: It's a profit center. The college's donors are paying for it.

    Yea right.

    Which donors? Money launderers for foreign psychological warfare departments.

    Like alumni donors and the state of Oregon?

    I notice that the link you referred to throws out US intelligence and the FBI as your "foreign psychological warfare departments". And the jargon of the snowflake movement changes all the time. It's not relevant that terms in use now came about in the past few years. That's the nature of the beast which is viciously status signaling. A key way to status signal (particularly among people who can barely afford the lifestyle) is using the latest and shiniest vocabulary.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:09PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @04:09PM (#785553)

      Here are some snowflakes with experience rooting out infiltration by GPU and FBI assets [wsws.org]. Daniel Golden’s Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and foreign intelligence secretly exploit America’s universities [wsws.org]:

      Basing himself on extensive journalistic research, Golden shows that the lines between US academia and the state are often so blurred as to be non-existent. While the collaboration between US academia and the state has a long history, its current scale has not been seen since the 1950s and 60s, and surpasses perhaps even that period. In Golden’s words, the CIA has come to penetrate “higher education more deeply than ever.”

      In the stronger, second part of the book, Golden details the CIA’s penetration of US academia. Historically, the CIA and the upper echelons of American universities have had a close relationship. McGeorge Bundy, who was an intelligence officer during World War II and then became the national security adviser to both Kennedy and Johnson, described the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, as “half cops-and-robbers and half faculty meeting.” The OSS was, in Golden’s words, “largely an Ivy League bastion.” In the decades to come, the typical CIA officer would be educated at Ivy League institutions before or while working for the agency.

      Following the anti-war movement of the 1960s, there was a pushback against the CIA’s involvement on campus, but it did not last long. By the late 1970s and the 1980s, the CIA had taken numerous successful steps toward mending its ties with the academy. In 1977, the CIA launched the “scholars-in-residence” program. Participating professors were given contracts to advise CIA analysts during their sabbaticals, and were given access to classified information. In 1985, the “officers-in-residence” component was added, placing intelligence officers close to retirement at universities. Many other programs, including the Boren scholarship for students studying the languages of countries deemed potential threats to US national security—including Persian, Russian, Turkish and Chinese—were set up with funding by the CIA.

      Today, there is little to no line between the universities, especially in political science and international relations departments, and the CIA.

      As Golden points out, this is not just because of efforts by the CIA. A new generation of professors has emerged who not only make no effort to conceal their ties to the CIA and national security apparatus, but, actually brag about them. As an example, Golden names Barbara Walter, professor of political sciences at the University of California, San Diego, who “considers it a public service to educate the CIA.” She provides “unpaid presentations on her specialty, civil wars, at think tanks fronting for the agency, sometimes for audiences whose name tags carry only first names. When CIA recruiters have visited UCSD, she has helped them organize daylong simulations of foreign policy crises to measure graduate students’ analytic abilities—and even role-played a CIA official.”

      More recent links:

      Portland State University threatens to fire Peter Boghossian for authoring “Grievance Studies” hoax [wsws.org]
      US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson targeted by #MeToo campaign [wsws.org]

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 13 2019, @05:08AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 13 2019, @05:08AM (#785800) Journal

        Basing himself on extensive journalistic research, Golden shows that the lines between US academia and the state are often so blurred as to be non-existent.

        In other words, a small number of academics also worth for US intelligence. Not much point to the entire two quotes you copied. So many words to say so very little.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:44PM (#785543)

    I personally know someone who was active on a far left college campus in 2011.

    There was a lot of discussion of privilege, and the checking thereof, and the nature of privilege in determining complicity in, or victimisation by, various forms of bigotry.

    If you think that this cropped up in the last ten years, I have an inside line on a bridge going cheap.